Last month in The Nation, Dale Maharidge wrote a harrowing account of what the journalism world already knew: Today’s daily newspaper industry is bleak, rife with depressed layoff victims, decimated newsrooms and survivors facing a scary future and a mountain of work to fill the void.

New Media Investment Group Inc. said Thursday that it will purchase "substantially all of the assets of Stephens Media" for $102.5 million in cash. Stephens Media is jointly owned by Warren Stephens and his cousins, Witt Stephens Jr. and Elizabeth Stephens Campbell.

Neiswanger will replace staff writer Chris Bahn, who shifted beats late last year to cover Wal-Mart when reporter Cyd King moved to Little Rock. King began covering development in downtown Little Rock after the departure of Jack Weatherly last fall.

Stephens Media, the newspaper chain jointly owned by Warren Stephens and his cousins, Witt Stephens Jr. and Elizabeth Stephens Campbell, has been downsizing since a new CEO arrived last December. And last month, the Florida-based newspaper chain that Warren Stephens helped start in 2010 was sold in a $280 million deal that will close early next year.

The Southwest Times Record of Fort Smith says 37 employees will be laid off when its owner, Stephens Media, moves printing and mailroom operations for the daily paper and six weeklies to Springdale and Lowell.

Interviews with five successful freelance writers in central Arkansas reveal a shared attitude toward their careers: Luck, they say, has been their friend. But scratch deeper and what several of them call luck is really the good fortune of the smart, the accurate, the prepared, the disciplined, the willing and — most important — the reliable.

Readers of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette may have wondered why a story that competitor Stephens Media of Las Vegas had written about its own work was published in the Nov. 27 issue of the statewide daily newspaper.